


What We Are

by orphan_account



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Meta, Metafiction, fic as meta, luninosity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m sorry,” Sebastian says. “I’ll try to visit soon.” He hesitates for a moment, trying to decide whether to bring up the fundraiser. He reluctantly decides on yes. “I guess you wouldn’t have heard about this- for my birthday, my fans raised money for an Alzheimer’s charity, because they knew about Pops.”<br/>“Oh, that’s wonderful!” his mother says. “In honor of him?”<br/>“I guess,” says Sebastian. “Mostly in honor of me.”</p><p>Or, my response to some recent discussion on luninosity's tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Are

**Author's Note:**

> SO. I love luninosity to death, but there's been some ethical issues raised on her tumblr, and I wanted to weigh in on them, so I did so via fic. Hopefully I've done this respectfully.
> 
> http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/149013273979/rpf-anon-here-your-tag-asked-if-someone-really
> 
> http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/149247651249/i-agree-with-your-point-about-the-death-of-chriss

**-a few weeks ago-**

 

“I can’t believe it,” says Sebastian’s mother. “How did my baby get to be 34?”

“I know, Ma,” Sebastian replies, smiling into the phone. “I think I’m supposed to feel like a grownup by now, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well, I hope you’re having a good birthday,” she says.

“Oh, I am. Did you see that one of my coworkers wished me happy birthday on Twitter and it was trending on Facebook?”

“You know I don’t follow your Internet things, honey,” she replies. “I’d rather hear about your life from you.”

This is why Sebastian loves his mom.

They chat for a while, his mom asking him about his friends and his roles. Eventually the conversation comes around to his stepfather.

“How’s Pops?” he asks.

She sighs. “It’s… it’s hard. He still has good days, but…” She trails off, but Sebastian stays quiet, letting the silence linger between them.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll try to visit soon.” He hesitates for a moment, trying to decide whether to bring up the fundraiser. He reluctantly decides on yes. “I guess you wouldn’t have heard about this- for my birthday, my fans raised money for an Alzheimer’s charity, because they knew about Pops.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” his mother says. “In honor of him?”

“I guess,” says Sebastian. “Mostly in honor of me.”

“Still,” she says. “How nice. Do you want to tell him, or should I?”

“Um,” he stammers. “Well. Actually I don’t think we should tell him?” Sebastian waits for her reply, hears disapproval in her silence. “I mean, even if he could understand, it’s just...it was a really nice thing for my fans to do. But really, it has nothing to do with him. They just thought it would be important to me.” Another pause. “And I mean, it is, but- It’s just that- let’s just not tell him, okay?”

“But sweetie, don’t you think he should know they care?” she protests.

“They… they don’t know him, and he doesn’t know them,” Sebastian sighs. “Look, can you just not tell him. Or anyone.”

“Well. If you say so,” she says. They wrap up the conversation and exchange “I love you”s. But when he hangs up, Sebastian is left with a bad taste in his mouth.

His fans are so generous, and he is so grateful. But for some reason, something about this feels weird.

 

**-a few years later-**

 

Sebastian’s stepfather wakes up feeling more clearheaded and focused than he has in years. Even so, it takes him a little while to figure out why he’s in a hospital, and why all his loved ones are hanging around looking miserable.

He figures it out once he looks down at his own pale, lifeless body.

Death is strange, but the most surprising thing about it is how busy it keeps him. He’s visited by innumerable long-dead friends and family members, all clamoring for news about the living world. Unfortunately, he can’t remember much from the last few years. And while he’s happy to see his loved ones…

...they’re all just  _ different. _

It’s not that they’ve changed in the way people grow and change over time; rather, they’re exactly like they were in life, just a little  _ wrong. _ Traits are exaggerated, subtleties are lost. They repeat themselves more than he thought they used to, and everything is just a little off.  _ Like static from the phone, _ he thinks,  _ or fuzziness from the copy machine. _ And something about that idea feels important, but then he’s pulled over to see yet another friend who he’s been missing for years, and he loses the train of thought.

And then there’s the funeral, where he sees all the people that he used to know, and even more ghosts of people he hasn’t seen in years. It’s overwhelming, but gradually he becomes aware of a young man lurking at the back of the crowd surrounding him. The man looks to be in his early twenties, and is watching him intently, and is clearly a ghost, and the thing is that Sebastian Stan’s stepfather doesn’t recognize him. Not at all. But he’s got an eager, impatient look, as though he has something to say that’s more important than the choruses of welcomes from the dead and farewells from the living.

Finally, he slips out of a conversation to go talk to the young man, who waves and greets him as he approaches. “Hey, nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Matt Bardsley.”

“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten you,” says the stepfather. “Just as I was getting everything else back, too. How did we know each other?”

“Actually we didn’t,” says Matt. “I was a friend of a colleague of your stepson’s. I died back when the two of us were 22. Anyway, I came to talk to you ‘cause we’re in a similar situation.”

“And that is?” the stepfather prompts.

“Well, uh.” He pauses. “Chris- my friend- is a famous actor. He was in some of the same movies as Sebastian. Were you, um, still aware of stuff during that time?”

“A little, I believe.”

“Okay. Well. Anyway. Chris has a lot of fans, and some of them are pretty devoted. And some of them know about me, and how I died, and how Chris really misses me.” Matt looks away for a minute, wistful. “And so… has anyone explained to you how ghostliness works?” The stepfather shakes his head. “Okay, well basically, you feel like you’re the spirit of the person who died, right? The same soul, but outside the body.” Matt pauses for effect. “Not really, actually. You’re all the things that the living people believe about you, coalesced into one and given consciousness.”

“But I feel like me!” protests the stepfather.

“‘Course you do,” says Matt. “You were created a few days ago when your original died, so you’ve never been anyone else. But here’s where it gets really weird- when the beliefs people have about you start to shift, you’ll shift too. And it will happen.”

Matt pauses, looks away, takes a deep breath. “Here’s what happened to me,” he said. “After I died, they made a big fuss about me. So as ghosts go, I was relatively strong. But after a few years, most people stopped thinking about me as much. I got weaker, and most of my power came from just a few people- my family and Chris, mostly. And even that dwindles over time.

“Then suddenly a few years ago... I started to get stronger again, but at the same time I felt like I was losing things. Memories, personality traits… it was weird. For the longest time I didn’t understand, but then I went to check on Chris just because and I found out that he’d been mentioning me in interviews. And all his fans, they didn’t know a thing about me… but they knew I mattered to Chris, so they started to care about me and that made me stronger. Which would be good, except all they know about me is that I’m Chris’s friend who died, so…”

Matt smirks, but there’s pain in it. “That’s who I’m becoming. ‘Chris’s friend who died.’ Hell, at this point, that’s already who I am. They like to tell stories about Chris, and I make a good plot point, so.”

The stepfather is going cold. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks, but he can already half guess.

“It’s the same with you and Sebastian,” Matt says. “They enjoy imagining Sebastian all broken up over his poor tragic stepfather. And there are a lot of them, and they believe it pretty hard, so now that’s who you are.”

“But that can’t be!” protests the stepfather. “I’m not just that!”

“Well, you just died,” counters Matt. “There are still other people who remember you. Not to say the fans aren’t already having an influence. Can you even tell me your name?”

Of course the stepfather knows his own name, it’s-

It’s-

“I can’t,” he says brokenly. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” says Matt. “They don’t know, so you don’t.” He pauses. “Sorry. Look, I… I shouldn’t be so whiny about all this. I swear I’ve mostly made peace with this, it’s just seeing it happen all over again to someone else...”

“Well, I’d like to know how you did make peace,” says the stepfather.

Matt shrugs, huffs out a breath. “Okay. This might sound strange, but it’s all just stories, you know? Like, all of us ghosts, we really are just what people remember of us, because that’s all that’s left- the stories they tell about us. And people mostly tell stories about other people who matter to them, living or dead. I don’t mean like, stories in a book  _ necessarily _ , I mean stories as in memories and thinking you know someone. But sometimes they write those stories too. Like, people write stories about Chris and Sebastian, because they love their acting, what they do…”

“Chris and Sebastian  _ matter  _ to people. And they talk about us, because we mattered to them. So all it really means is that we were loved by someone special.” Matt grins. “That’s the answer I’ve found.”

“But-” protests the stepfather, trying to put his objections into words. “But I lived a life. A life that had Sebastian in it, but it wasn’t about Sebastian. I’m certainly grateful he loved me, but must that mean that I become nothing more than a fact about his life?”

“Well,” says Matt. “This isn’t about your nearest and dearest. This is about Sebastian’s fans. They don’t know you, of course- and mostly they don’t know Sebastian either. They just know a persona that they’ve created and he’s encouraged. He’s just a story to them, and so are you. They don’t mean to hurt people because they’re not interacting with people, they’re only engaging with the stories about them. The people who know you will remember you, more or less...”

“But all those people, believing I’m just Sebastian’s stepfather…” says the stepfather. “They still have beliefs about me and they’re still affecting me…”

“Yeah,” says Matt. “But we’re ghosts. We can’t do anything about it. Trust me, it’s better just to look at it like the way I explained.”

“I need to think,” the stepfather says.

“Of course,” Matt says. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

Matt fades into nothing. The wake is ending, and the other ghosts are mostly gone. But the quiet of the cemetery has no effect on the whirling chaos inside the stepfather’s head.

 

**-many years earlier-**

 

There’s a knock at Chris’s bedroom door. “Come in,” he yells.

His mother opens the door, sees him curled up on the floor half-covered in his blanket, and sighs.

“There’s going to be an assembly Tuesday at your old high school,” she says. “In honor of Matt, and talking about driving safety. I think you should go.” Chris groans, and burrows deeper into his blanket pile. “Chris-” she says.

“Mom. No,” he scowls. “It’s gonna be horrible.”

“Chris. You can’t just keep avoiding everything as though he’s still-”

“I know!” Chris roars. I  _ know _ he’s  _ dead _ . Just, it’s such- such  _ bullshit  _ how someone dies and suddenly people who never knew him are making a fuss about him!”

“Honey-” his mom starts.

“And also!” he yells. “Also all those people who don’t like off-roading, he  _ dies _ and then they all want to make him a part of their  _ cause! _ He’s not a person to anyone, he’s just- he’s just a death! And I’m not going, because-” his voice cracks.

Chris breathes. He will not cry. “I want to remember him alive. Because even if he wasn’t a person to anyone else, he was a person to me.”


End file.
